Angie Cooksy: 0:12

Welcome back to another episode of the Bradley University Podcast. We are your hosts. I am Angie Cooksie.

Ben Jedd: 0:18

And I'm Ben Jedd.

Angie Cooksy: 0:19

And we serve in roles in the university enrollment and marketing space here on campus. And honestly, Ben, this is one of my favorite things that we get to do.

Ben Jedd: 0:27

It's super fun. It's great just to talk to people on campus.

Angie Cooksy: 0:29

And you like hanging out with me.

Ben Jedd: 0:31

And it's air conditioned and it's really hot outside.

Angie Cooksy: 0:34

We record in Hilltop Studios, which, if you don't know where it is, it is in the basement lower level of University Hall and is a great space for not only our students, but for faculty and staff to have access to space like this where we can record podcasts and there's musical instruments and there's recording equipment and all sorts of things.

Ben Jedd: 0:52

You've been doing a bit of like singing recording, right? Like on your off times.

Angie Cooksy: 0:57

Welcome. If you've listened to previous episodes of the show, you like to know that Ben lies to you about my musical abilities.

Ben Jedd: 1:03

And that's not true.

Angie Cooksy: 1:04

The only place I sing is in the car where I sing 90s country. And so nobody wants to hear that, including my children who tell me that all of the time. So let's jump in. Nobody wants to hear our banter with our guest for today, Sue Boettcher, who is the general manager for dining services and collegiate hospitality here at Bradley. Did I get that title right, Sue?

Sue Boettcher: 1:23

Uh, you sure did.

Angie Cooksy: 1:24

Nice. Uh it means that our website is up to date.

Sue Boettcher: 1:27

Absolutely.

Ben Jedd: 1:28

That's great. That's great news.

Angie Cooksy: 1:29

Great news. Uh so the way that this works is Ben and I have a couple questions and really let you drive the conversation because the goal of the show is that people get to learn a little bit more about the humans who are on our campus doing amazing work in and in and around campus every single day. And so to get started, can you tell us a little bit about your background and your journey to the seat you sit in now here at Bradley and Dining Services?

Sue Boettcher: 1:53

Well, sure, I can do that. Um, I am a Wisconsin native, so just north of here. Um, grew up in Wisconsin. I, for much of my early part of my career, I worked in sports and entertainment hospitality. So um ASU, um, Arizona Cardinals football. Then I moved back home for Lambeau Field and spent eight years there overseeing food uh services there. I went to Atlanta and did the Atlanta Hawks and NASCAR as well. Um, and then I decided that uh that's great for a younger person. And I got into collegiate hospitality. So I spent some time at one of the Wisconsin colleges um for about four years opening up an account there. And then I came to Bradley University and Peoria. And I have to say, this is one of my favorites.

Ben Jedd: 2:44

That's really uh that's that is from the NFL to Bradley University, is quite the experience.

Angie Cooksy: 2:50

So I have a lot of questions now about like NASCAR and all that's I mean, you just wanted something that was that high pace and fast, which is why you're here here at Bradley. Um you want to jump in, Ben?

Ben Jedd: 3:02

Well, yeah, I was just I was just gonna say, can you tell us a little bit about the work you're doing in dining services at Bradley? Uh I mean it's an exciting time. We're gonna be opening a brand new dining hall. Uh, there's a number of things in the works. What can you tell us what's exciting, what's new, what's happening?

Sue Boettcher: 3:17

Oh my gosh, I am so excited. We have so much going on. So, first of all, we always try and do new stuff every year, and I think people don't always catch on to that and see what we've got. So I'm glad I'm here today, and I'm gonna be sharing a lot more with you two so that we can keep our students up to speed of just all the events we have going on. But of course, the big one right now is Williams Dinings Hall. So brand new dining hall. They are still, I actually got to walk through it two weeks ago, and it just got me more excited about what's to come.

Angie Cooksy: 3:48

Wait, can we walk through? I would like to know when we could walk through.

Sue Boettcher: 3:52

Well, I know a guy, and we can we can set up a tour. So yes, yes, hard hats and uh a fancy like yellowish vest, too. I'm so in. That's my tie. Yes, if you can rock neon, you might be able to take a tour. So but the the dining hall is based a lot on fresh made and made to order. So when students come in, there's gonna be a lot more choices. The one thing that's nice about a new facility is not only new equipment, but the infrastructure to do a lot of new things that we couldn't do in our older dining halls just because of how they were constructed. So with a newer dining hall, yes, that means burgers and pizza.

Ben Jedd: 4:32

Sure.

Sue Boettcher: 4:33

So and that seems silly, silly, I think, for some folks, and they're like, really? You couldn't do that before? But we didn't have the infrastructure to do that cooking out front that we do now. So, but when you go into the dining hall, big salad bar, fresh made, you will people a lot of the prep will all be done out front in the stations. So our staff will actually be working in front of the guests and they can see their food being made. So you don't have this big kitchen and back, and stuff is just coming out on a tray magically from behind a curtain. But rather it's made in front of them. Um, a big set uh big sandwich station where again students get their sandwiches made to order, different toppings, different breads. We're gonna do some housemate breads this year. Yeah, so I'm really excited about that. Um, so we'll be you know baking breads here on campus. And then we have a huge saute station, which is one of my things I'm most excited about. So students will be able to go through the line and basically fill a bowl with what they want made. So a variety of proteins, a variety of vegetables. They'll fill up the bowl, they'll take it right to one of the saute cooks, and the cooks will prepare it for them, add whatever sauce they want. So maybe they're, you know, they want uh sweet and sour, maybe they want teriyaki, maybe they just want some, you know, fresh broccoli that's you know sauteed in butter and garlic. We can do that. We'll have days that we feature more Asian foods and days that will feature more pastas and things like that. But every day the students can pick from that and have it made how they want. So that's gonna be a lot of fun.

Ben Jedd: 6:04

I'm I'm starving now.

Angie Cooksy: 6:06

So we are recording this over the lunch hour and now I'm really hungry.

Sue Boettcher: 6:09

And so that's only part of it. So then on the other side, we have the again, we have pizzas. Um we'll we'll feature five different pizzas every day. Um, we'll always have a couple favorites, right? You gotta have cheese and pepperoni, just for those days that you can't decide what you want to eat. You know, grab a piece of cheese pizza and contemplate life. But um, you know, different, different pizzas, dessert pizzas, um calzones, so a lot of things that'll be featured, a much larger station. Um, our grill station will we'll rotate through burgers, um, sausages, grilled chicken, grilled pork chops. So a lot of different things that we can do on the grill. We still will have what we call our main ingredient, which is kind of our comfort foods. So we'll be featuring some of those, you know, again, that's your mashed potato and gravy place. Um, carved meats. We have a carver carving station, so we can do carved turkey and carved ham, um, you know, soups, of course. And then I think what's really important too in there is we have our true balance station. All of our foods in our true balance are made avoiding the top nine allergens. And they're served. So that area for for folks that struggle with any allergens or food intolerances, know that they can go to that station, try a lot of the different foods, and they don't have to worry about those nine allergens being in that area.

Ben Jedd: 7:24

That's I mean, I'm I'm like speechless. That's that sounds so great and like such a step up from what Bradley has offered in the past. So that's really exciting.

Angie Cooksy: 7:34

Um, one of the things that you had shared, so Sue had done sort of an uh an intro to some of the new dining things for for some of us recently. And before I left that meeting, I was like, Sue, we need to share this with all of the people. Um, but a couple things that you had mentioned in that is things like we grow vegetables on campus. Yes. Or we you had mentioned the the top nine allergens. Um, what are some of those things that maybe are unexpected about Bradley's new dining presentation that people maybe you want people to be getting excited about?

Sue Boettcher: 8:05

About Williams? Or just in or in general?

Angie Cooksy: 8:08

Things that you guys are doing here in and around campus.

Sue Boettcher: 8:10

All right. Well, our gardens are something that I am really I'm always excited to talk about our gardens. Um we have um several years ago, we expanded out into the patio of Geysert, which is between Geysert and Heights. Thank you. No problem. Um, so there we have outdoor seating there. Um right now we're using that. Obviously, during the summer, it's a great place to sit because it's it's between the two buildings, so it's the right time of day. It gets great shade when it's like 100 degrees out. But it's also a great growing area when it's hot. So um we grow a lot of tomatoes, a lot of uh peppers, zucchini, um, and a lot of herbs that we use in our cooking. So everything we grow out there goes right into the kitchens.

Ben Jedd: 8:52

That's so cool. That's great.

Sue Boettcher: 8:54

So um we started out and we start out early in March with lettuces because it's cold weather crop. So we start right away in March growing and we were already harvesting by May.

Angie Cooksy: 9:05

That's so cool.

Sue Boettcher: 9:06

So yeah. And then we'll whatever we have for fall, we will continue, we'll just move it over to Williams, all the produce.

Angie Cooksy: 9:12

And I I might be misremembering, so correct me if I'm wrong, but you have some Bradley students who are part of some of these experiences too, right?

Sue Boettcher: 9:20

You bet. We have we work with um Family Consumer Sciences, so with their 405-408 class um that students take, a lot of it is typically our dietetic students that have to take food management. So they do lab work with us year-round, which I love. They do a lot in the fall is production, food production. So they get the glamorous slicing, dicing, chopping part. And then in the spring they do a lot more um inventory, receiving, ordering, seeing what our managers have to to kind of um juggle. And then they have an opportunity to help um plant the gardens too in the spring if they want. But so we had a few students come over and help do the planting early in in May, uh in March rather.

Ben Jedd: 10:06

So I think that this is a great segue to my next question because you your office really influences the student experience. Um what are you most excited about about how dining integrates and enhances the student experience here at Bradley?

Sue Boettcher: 10:24

What I'm most excited about is really kind of the journey we've taken to get to where we are right now. Um we've involved a lot of students along the way. So we always have advisory meetings every three times every semester where students can come in and tell us feedback on what they like, what they don't like. And I always tell students, like, tell us what you love, tell us what you hate. And they kind of look at you like, I don't want to tell you I don't like something. I'm like, no, please do, because we don't want to serve something that the students don't care for. You know, if you love our chicken noodle soup and you want to see it seven times a week, let us know. But if you hate it and you don't want to see it, we will need to know that too, because we have other options, and that's how we can adjust our menus. But going into Williams, we were able to incorporate, we also had um dietitian um interns. So they're in grad school, they're doing their year-long internship, and this spring we had six interns that actually helped develop the one the Williams menus.

Angie Cooksy: 11:19

Oh, that's so cool.

Sue Boettcher: 11:20

So they gave us a ton of feedback, they actually access our into our systems to pull recipes and to help design and pull different ideas out. Um, and then we also have a couple students that work in our offices during the school years. One is a data analytics student and he loves asking people questions and getting data. That's awesome. Um, which I think is awesome because I don't like to sit there and make graphs, and he does. Um, so he pulled a lot of information from us. He would go out and talk to students and just, you know, and we adjusted our hours of operation in Williams based on the feedback that he got for us, which is we're gonna open a little bit later at 745, and we're gonna stay open later till nine o'clock at night. And that was based directly on what students were asking for. So that's the thing that I'm most excited about is as we've gone kind of on this journey for for quite some time. We've been able to gather a lot of student feedback, and that I think is so important.

Angie Cooksy: 12:18

I'm so excited for it to open. Um, one of the things I, as you were just talking about, even just the timing, you know, we we often think about the dining experience here being for our traditional residential on-campus students, but you'll have a lot of options for our commuter students or for students that maybe live in an off-campus house or even our faculty and staff. Are there anything that maybe you want to share with some of those other populations about how they can leverage dining on campus?

Sue Boettcher: 12:43

Oh, you bet. So we've got um, we always have what we call off-campus plans. And anybody who doesn't live in the residential halls can purchase one. So if they live in the student apartment complex, Main Street Commons, St. James, maybe they commute and they live, they live at home and they're commuting. You can still get a plan. Um, and a lot of those are custom made for they're sized right for off-campus.

Ben Jedd: 13:06

Sure.

Sue Boettcher: 13:06

So you're not necessarily going to have seven meals, you know, you know, 21 meals a week, or you know, eat three times a day there. But you might have two or three days where you're on campus really long hours, or you may really not like to cook. Or it just might be that day that you're like, I don't want to cook. Um, so there are plans that you can get that are either they're called 25, 50, or 100 block. That's how many meal swipes you have into the dining hall. They also come with dining dollars that you can use in the retail areas. So if you've got to grab a coffee between class or whatever, and those those three um plans are available for all of our off-campus students. And we're running a deal right now on those plans where if they purchase before August 1st, they get $50 off any of the plans. They get a mug for free coffee all fall, so it's free drip coffee with the mug that they'll get when they purchase the plan. And they get entered to win a bike. Because yeah, I mean, you need to have some transportation if you're Bradley Red, it is not. Oh, dang. It is not. They have their choice from a black one or a really cool, I'm gonna say it's a really pretty blue. So nice.

Angie Cooksy: 14:18

Maybe we can get them like a Bradley bike license plate.

Ben Jedd: 14:21

That'd be great.

Sue Boettcher: 14:22

That'd be cool. That'd be cool.

Ben Jedd: 14:23

We'll work on that.

Angie Cooksy: 14:24

It's the marketing side of my brain right now.

Sue Boettcher: 14:26

Yeah, and then we do have some surprises coming in retail too. You know, over in the student center, everybody goes through the student center, it seems like that's our hub, kind of central there on campus, especially if you're looking for food and beverages. Um, if you haven't perused through campus this summer, Chick-fil-A is going undergoing a huge remodel. So Chick-fil-A is expanding out a little bit. It's gonna be a full-service restaurant, and what that means is that um you can go and purchase directly from the the Chick-fil-A area without going through the main cashier lines. There's gonna be three kiosks located throughout Student Center, so you can actually come in and just order from the kiosk and then go up to the counter and get your Chick-fil-A.

Angie Cooksy: 15:10

And we will be adding no contact experience.

Sue Boettcher: 15:14

And we'll be adding mac and cheese and the kale crunch salad. So I've heard I got a lot of excitement when I've mentioned that in the past. So I I'm not sure if it's for the kale crunch or the mac and cheese, but I have either way, it's a win-win.

Angie Cooksy: 15:29

You got healthy and you got comfort food.

Ben Jedd: 15:30

So I'm interested in the coffee cup to get free coffee for the year.

Sue Boettcher: 15:34

So and we do have faculty staff plans as well. So um faculty staff can purchase dining plans as well. Um, it's a 10 meal swipe um package for all of our faculty and staff here on campus, and um, so that'll be a great thing for them as well.

Ben Jedd: 15:50

Is there a promotion period that if we do it in a certain amount of time we get a coffee cup?

Sue Boettcher: 15:54

Um there is nothing for a friend, but I do know that we are looking at doing um an event in the New Williams for our faculty and staff looking ahead in uh August, and we'll be giving out some things and some enter to win, so you might win some free meals. Excellent. Or a coffee cup.

Angie Cooksy: 16:14

Um well, as we as we wrap up, one of the things that we always like to ask everybody to to wrap up our show is really putting you on the spot and and giving people an opportunity to learn a little bit more about you and with your background and all of the different places that you've been and and your time here at Broadley. Um, what makes you unapologetically exceptional? What are you really great at, Sue?

Sue Boettcher: 16:35

Um, well, if you ask my managers, it's probably coming up with more things to do. Um but one of the things I like to do is is I look at is I always like to innovate. I always like to say what's next, you know, especially when it comes to food and dining, because recognizing that our students are here on campus seven days a week, but even for us, you know, we're we're here seven days a week too, nights and weekends. So we always want to find new foods or what that trend is or what can we do better or different or in every year, how do we continue to innovate and then deliver what the students are looking for because tastes change every year.

Angie Cooksy: 17:12

Yeah, I love that.

Ben Jedd: 17:13

That's great. Thank you so much, Sue.

Angie Cooksy: 17:15

This has been so it's made me so hungry that I Ben is at a loss of words, which does not happen very frequently, everybody.

Ben Jedd: 17:25

So I really appreciate it. I I'm so excited to see what that new dining experience is gonna look like. I think it's gonna be just it's gonna be a real wow factor. So thank you.

Angie Cooksy: 17:34

Well, and Ben was just saying uh before before we had Yuan, I don't think people realize how big the footprint of it of Williams is. Like we are just standing in the lobby of U-Haul and you're like, it's right, it's right there. Yeah. So it's gonna be so cool. It's gonna change the the face of campus.

Sue Boettcher: 17:48

Yep. And what's also fun about it is in addition to the dining hall, is there will be a cafe in there um called Williams Cafe. Um, and it will have feature Starbucks drinks, of course, and grab and go items. So similar to what we have at Delauders, which is over in Beck, we will have at Williams. So if you live in Williams or you live in U-Hall and you just have your pajamas on and you want to go grab a cup of coffee, you don't have to go across campus. It'll be right there. And that will be open seven days a week for our students.

Angie Cooksy: 18:16

Awesome.

Ben Jedd: 18:17

That's wonderful.

Angie Cooksy: 18:18

Well, that wraps up another episode of the Bradley University Podcast. Sue, thank you so much for joining us. And as always, if you are listening and you want to come on the show, reach out to us. We'd love to have you and highlight the work that you are doing on campus. And that wraps us up with a Go Bradley.

Ben Jedd: 18:32

Go Bradley.

Angie Cooksy: 18:33

Bye, everyone.